The Phoenix Has Landed

Iddo Genuth writes "Precisely at 7:53PM EST, the "Phoenix Mars Lander" touched-down on the desert-like surface of Mars. Since its launch on August 4th, 2007, the spacecraft has covered more than 680,752,512 kilometers, traveling at average speeds of around 120,000 km/hr. Upon arriving at its destination, the Phoenix will begin its exploration of our intriguing neighbor planet, in a mission to help astronomers resolve at least some of the many questions regarding Mars. The key question remains: can the Red Planet support some form of life?" Hella grats to our nerd brethren — you looked great on the Science channel. Yes I'm watching this live. Can't wait to see what happens next.
Update: 05/26 03:0 GMT by KD : zof sends a link to the first pictures from Phoenix.

lander, not rover

[Garganus]

I understand your point. Just so we're all clear, though; Phoenix sits on legs, not wheels, so there will be no 'puttering around' the pole.

Re:Too far south

[QuantumTheologian]

Ice on the surface is further north, but they expect the top meter of soil to be about 80% ice at the landing site.

Re:Doesn't even have to be live life...

[adamkennedy]

The short answer, to keep inside the weight budget. When you add wheels, you need to compromise on the science instruments.

So Phoenix packs much better science gear than the rovers, and to compensate they just try to drop it somewhere uniform and with a decent chance of finding what you are looking for regardless of the specific drop point.

Re:Late Breaking News

[Tablizer]

When dissenters questioned whether the warming of our enemy's planet was due to his own self-destructive habits or our weaponry, K'Breel ordered their gelsacs pierced on the spot.

Shit! Space is still no escape from stupid leaders.
   

first images 2200 EDT

[Doofus]

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=313&cID=7 [arizona.edu]

Pictures Already

[GreggBz]

Within minutes of the first downlink, pictures were available on the net.

one [arizona.edu]
two [arizona.edu]
three [arizona.edu]

That's fantastic.

Pictures

[potat0man]

Here are the photos it has taken so far.

http://fawkes1.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=0&cID=7 [arizona.edu]

Re:Doesn't even have to be live life...

[DerekLyons]

What are the chances of puttering around for a few hundred meters on earth and randomly finding a human skeleton?..

I was surprised when I found that Phoenix has no mobility. But then, I have thought about it for all of 5 minutes, while the NASA engineers have thought about it for 5 years, so there must have been a good reason to leave that feature out.

Two reasons: The first is weight - mobility systems cost a great of it, and every gram alloted to them is a gram that can't be spent on science. Which also means that had it wheels, Phoenix would be limited to same modest science package the rovers have. The second is mission life time - unlike the rovers, the odds of Phoenix dying once winter comes are near unity. Which means that a notional wheeled Phoenix with it's much more modest science package won't cover much ground before freezing to death.

Re:did anyone else notice the logo?

[seasleepy]

But that is the logo for the lander [arizona.edu] though...

Re:Amazing how short sighted ppl are

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, NASA engineer here. Look up the Mars Science Lander (MSL) mission being built at JPL (link below). Nuke powered and huge. Upgrade from the Vikings mission since it has WHEELS. Will launch in September 2009.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

High resolution images up, slashdotted

[mrbah]

Dammit, the University of Arizona website (which hosts the high resolution images) has been slashdotted. A few of the photos are already up on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] though, so use that if you can't get through.

Re:EXACTLY.

[Waffle Iron]

We currently have more plutonium right here on earth than we know what to do with. Spent nuclear fuel and disassembled nuclear weapons both contain plutonium and contribute to the current glut. We are burning some of it up in nuclear reactors, and we're trying to figure out how to safely bury the rest. What's actually in short supply is the specific isotope used to power: RTGs Pu-238.

The problem is not a shortage of raw materials (Pu-238 is currently made by irradiating components of otherwise useless nuclear waste.) The problem is that the steps involved in production and extraction of the isotope are dangerous, esoteric and expensive, so we haven't been doing it.

Re:The Hell?

[AMuse]

From the blog: "They're black and white pictures meant primarily to tell whether our deployments successfully occurred."

Color pictures in high-res take a lot longer to download over a very slow radio link (Latency to mars is 20 - 40 minutes).

Black and white photos are the "test" set because you'll get them down quicker.

Re:Pictures

[ahecht]

I made up a 3D image of the landing leg by combining two of the published pictures. You can clearly see a mount that formed that makes it look like the lander slid as it touched down. The first version is 3D if you cross your eyes, the second version requires red-blue 3D glasses:
http://img294.imageshack.us/my.php?image=phoenixlegstereoug5.jpg [imageshack.us]
http://i27.tinypic.com/24yyfix.jpg [tinypic.com]

Re:Pictures [color]

[Tablizer]

I wonder why they don't have colour immagers!?

Usually they use filters to provide color for space missions. The first pass is a general survey. Filter-based color requires multiple images of the same spot, which will probably come later. Plus, they will probably use "science-friendly" filters before they use human-eye-friendly filters. Science before beauty. Just be patient...
     

Re:Pictures Already

[doubletruncation]

Like many scientific imagers, the camera on phoenix (called the surface stereo imager http://fawkes3.lpl.arizona.edu/science_ssi.php [arizona.edu] ) uses a filter wheel in front of a CCD. They have 12 filters picked specifically for geological and atmospheric interest. Presumably three of the filters roughly correspond to red, green and blue, so they can take an image through each filter and then composite them into a single color image. I assume they've just been posting the raw images taken through a given filter first and will composite them once they've got a set in. Note that your digital camera works in a similar way (takes images through three filters and composites them, it may place a permanent color filter array in front of the CCD, or use three separate CCDs and a beam splitter rather than using a spinning filter wheel), except it does the compositing automatically. Since the imager on phoenix will not be used exclusively for making RGB color images, there's no reason to have the camera automatically take images through those three filters and do the compositing. Also, it looks like many of the images they've taken first are of the solar arrays - I imagine they wanted to take quick single filter images of each array and send them back first over their limited bandwidth to see that they really deployed, before taking and transmitting a color panorama.

Re:Pictures

[v1]

In some cases landers have to deal with what color of light makes it to the surface. Earth has a clear atmosphere, which is uncommon. Mars's atmosphere makes everything look sepia.

Re:Pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

This link shows clickable thumbnails [arizona.edu] of all the post-landing images.

They're cool. Like a sand and gravel version of the Viking and Pathfinder landing sites (i.e. finer-grained with few boulders), and with obvious furrows in a polygonal geometry -- i.e. small "high centre" permafrost polygons [wikipedia.org]. Quite a lot of sand and gravel was kicked up by the landing engines close to the lander. It is possible to see where some of the pebbles were rolled, leaving small indentations in the sandier sediment, and implying that some of the surface material isn't well cemented together (i.e. by ice).

Solar arrays look good.

The images are surprisingly high resolution for the first pass. When the first color images are available tomorrow it will be awesome.

Amazing

[lanceroni_123]

we can send a robotic spaceship 680 million miles through deep space, but cannot make an electric car. Hmmmmmm.

Re:Amazing how short sighted ppl are

[evilviper]

And even as much as fears regarding nuclear power may be overstated, Plutonium is, and will always be pretty scary stuff. We don't want to contaminate our atmosphere, oceans, and land, and also don't want to do the same to the surface of Mars.

This is pure ignorance talking. Having an RTG around isn't going to "contaminate" anything. They are fully sealed, and even in the worst case, can withstand extremely severe impacts without releasing any fissile material.

And in the worst case??? We end up with a boulder somewhere on Mars that just happens to stay warm. "Plutonium" is a good and scary word, but the Plutonium 238 used in RTGs is completely different from the Plutonium 239 used in nuclear weapons. It has a half-life of less than a century, and is merely an alpha emitter. Practically zero gamma emissions, which is the only kind of "radiation" people know about, and what they're so terribly afraid of.

Even if there was a launch failure high in the Earth's atmosphere, who cares? It's not a gamma emitter... It can't possibly do any damage to anyone, unless someone perhaps feels the urge to eat large quantities of it, in which case it's probably more toxic as a heavy metal than as a radioactive substance.

Remember, it's happened before... Apollo 13's RTG is currently keeping the fish warm, on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Despite the high speed re-entry, the casing remains in-tact.

Re:Doesn't even have to be live life...

[QuoteMstr]

A "cheap" CCD might produce something approximating what the eye would see under typical Earth lighting conditions, but not under Martial conditions. Haven't you ever taken a photograph indoors and been disappointed at the poor color reproduction?

Re:Pictures [color] THEY'RE HERE...

[Concerned Onlooker]

Those are false-color images. The real deal will be coming later.

Re:lander, not rover

[Morkano]

I wonder, how long it would take either Spirit or Opportunity to drive there from their present locations if something interesting was found?

Longer than it would take to plan, design, build, launch, and land a rover right there, I imagine.

In the years it's been on Mars, Opportunity has only travelled about 11.6km. Spirt is about 7.5km. http://marsrover.nasa.gov/mission/traverse_maps.html [nasa.gov]

Re:Pictures [color] THEY'RE HERE...

[1karmik1]

They're 2-filtered. Violet 450-nanometer filter and an infrared, 750-nanometer filter. (As stated here. [nasa.gov])

Re:Again, EXACTLY.

[khallow]

Yes, an always on power source in the megawatt range is to say the least tricky. The cooling system fails even once and you have a blob of permanently molten metal on your spacecraft instead.

Re:lander, not rover

[shogun]

Ok some quick (most likely way off) calculations to work out just how long that would be:

The Phoenix lander is at about 234E 68N while Opportunity is at 1.95S, 5.53W and Spirit is at 14.57S, 175.47E.

Using great circle distances Opportunity is about 6040km away while Spirit is a fair bit closer at 3830km.

Assuming either rover travelling at their maximum top speed of 0.182km/h (not counting the need to stop and review the terrain every 10 seconds or to hibernate over winter) they would take this long to reach the Phoenix landing site:

Opportunity: 1383 days (3.7 years)
Spirit: 876 days (2.4 years)

And considering this is a best case scenario it might be a little quicker to get a new mission plan through NASA bureaucracy and launch it to the same area than to try and drive either rover to Phoenix.